Cate back for Elizabeth II - the sequel that is

Flora Robson, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, even Quentin Crisp: the roll call of actors who have grappled with Gloriana is long and impressive. And Blanchett, it seems, has not yet tired of the Virgin Queen. Next month, she starts shooting a sequel to her 1998 film Elizabeth. It is the latest project from Working Title, the makers of Four Weddings and a Funeral and the Bridget Jones films.

Picking up the tale 15 years on from the events of Elizabeth, The Golden Age - which will be filmed on location in Cambridge and Ely and in Shepperton Studios - will touch on the queen's relationship with Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), and climax on the eve of the Armada.

Geoffrey Rush will reprise his role as the spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham; Michael Sheen will appear as his brother. Shekhar Kapur will again direct, and Working Title favourite Rhys Ifans will appear as a priest. Absent is Joseph Fiennes as Robert Dudley, whose relationship with the queen dominated the first film. Though the real Dudley lived until 1588, the year of the Armada, Elizabeth's virginal but roving eye will this time alight on Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh. Tim Bevan, co-founder of Working Title, describes the film as "an Elizabethan thriller".

After September's tour de force by Helen Mirren in Channel 4's Elizabeth I, and Anne-Marie Duff's title role in BBC1's The Virgin Queen in January, can audiences stomach the glut of Gloriana?

Bevan denies the project confirms some critics' accusations of a backwards-looking British film industry churning out sequels, or plundering well-worn stories. "Unless I thought the goods were in the story I wouldn't be interested. This story is a rich one: it does not show paucity of the imagination."

Jonathan Cavendish, who is producing The Golden Age, which should reach cinemas at the end of the year, said: "Neither of the TV films showed anything like this story. She is the most interesting, charismatic and fascinating of England's kings and queens. She appeals not only to women, but to men: she was sexy, powerful, frightening and talented."

Elizabeth I, it seems, has endless appeal. She has been idolised by centuries of small girls - not to mention by historian David Starkey, whose bestselling biography of the queen, Elizabeth, is wholehearted in its admiration of her beauty, guts, political acumen and learning.

As a result, perhaps, of its very familiarity, Elizabeth's story seems to mould itself neatly to the purposes of whoever retells it. Blanchett's first Elizabeth, for instance, reminded one that innocence is sacrificed on the road to power. Mirren's portrayal suggested that even monarchs yearn for human affection. Duff's Elizabeth was reminiscent by turns of Thatcher and Diana. In the Friedrich Schiller play, Mary Stuart, staged in the West End last year, Harriet Walter's Elizabeth suggested that even for a mighty ruler, power brings its own constraints.

By contrast, Blanchett's reprise will see Elizabeth portrayed as "the ultimate multi-tasker", according to Cavendish. "It's the story of the ultimate woman in the ultimate man's world," he added. "Her struggle to keep in charge while running her personal life while running what eventually becomes an empire."

The modern parallels do not stop there. Kapur - who has always conceived of the Elizabeth story as a trilogy of films - said the underlying thread of The Golden Age is "immortality and divinity; the way that great rulers always think of themselves as divine. Look at Blair, Bush, Bin Laden, the way that they talk about God."

The script, he said, also engages with a burning issue of our time: religious extremism. It pits Elizabeth, for the purposes of the film, as a paragon of tolerance against the Catholic fanaticism of Philip II of Spain. "The film Elizabeth, we think, was the definitive artistic statement about the early years of her reign," said Cavendish. "The Golden Age will do the same for the middle years. It will tell her story on a scale worthy of her. This is a great big movie with great big movie stars."